| SOUNDS
Sounds 1972 Sounds 1974 Concert Review Sounds-mid 70s Sounds-March 1975 Sounds 1975 - Interview Sounds December 1976 Sounds 1977 Ralph, Albert & Sydney Sounds-1979 |
SOUNDS
SOUNDS SOUNDS
SOUNDS Six hours later, McTell is one
concert older and one award richer. The
theatre manager presents him with a statuette, a thank you for an unprecedented
three shows at the Apollo in thirteen months.
“Streets of Glasgow” someone shouts down from the balcony but the hit
single is curiously absent from that evening’s programme.
A large chunk of solo material forms the crux of the show but it is a
departure for McTell carries with him a five piece band, a definite attempt to
move out of the restricting confines of being labelled a folkie. But to the fans clamouring
outside the stage door he is no more a folkie than any other lyricist they take
to heart. Autograph books and shouts of ‘Oh Ralph give us a kiss’ are out in
force. A mother, more exited than embarrassed follows her daughter in the queue
just to say thanks. McTell has come a long way from
the days he worried about developing dynamic tension, dreaming of a Charles
Atlas physique. Nurtured on muscleman paranoia, the same man that wouldn’t
take off his shirt at the beach, grins sheepishly at the female throng gathered
outside the stage door. “If I was only 18” he murmurs, “this sort of thing
used to happen in my fantasies.” Passionately The recent addition of the band
on tour has been years in the making. Not
until “Streets of London” leapt up the charts did McTell feels the personal
confidence to allow himself growth. How
many artists set out on a nationwide tour aided by the strength of a fresh hit
single only to ignore it in concert? “I haven’t done the song for
half the tour but I don’t need to do it.
They’re not coming just for the song.
In the beginning they told me to expect the teenybopper kids and I had a
sickly feeling, but,” he says, a frown turning to a grin, “they didn’t
come, it’s mostly the same old fans. I’m
sure we disappoint some people by not doing the single but I think I can afford
not to.” The reason for the song’s
exclusion is no calculated audience manipulation but rather a deep rooted fear
within McTell of being dishonest to his initial hard core following. He
dreads becoming a jukebox for people who don’t care. “The song got to number 7 and
they said do the Lulu show. That
was a mistake, I did it without thinking. I
did it at the expense of Ralph McTell. Those
kids that have followed me for years must feel cheated.
You pride yourself on the fact that you admire an obscure artist, you
spotted him, you feel he’s your own personal property.
I mean I’ve had letters in the past that said, ‘I’m glad you’re
not famous’, and I’m sure those people feel slightly cheated. “That’s why I’m desperate
to have another hit just to get away from ‘Streets’. If I were to set out to write a hit I couldn’t. It’s nice
that the follow up single, ‘El Progresso’ was written before ‘Streets’
was a hit, but,” he adds with jaded emotion, and a slight alcoholic buzz, “I
don’t give a fuck.” Typical of McTell’s working
class image, he stuck out like a sore thumb on ‘Top Of The Pops’, sandwiched
between all the satin suits and stacked heels, between the Barry White disco
hits and the latest RAK release. His
one concession to pop star fame was accepting a new pair of trousers, no denims,
from Warner Brothers’ promotional man, Bill Fowler. “They all come on TV so
relaxed that you don’t realise how much they believe in it all, and how bad
they want it to happen all those acts with their combed hair and pressed suits.
You ought to see it. I mean,
even Elton John, who cares what they smell like?” he throws up his hands in
confusion. “All that powdering and showering. I turn up and they said, ‘This is a DRESS rehearsal’ and
I said ‘I’m wearing it’ and I thought I looked smart! They told me to
smile but it’s not exactly a happy knees up song is it?” The type of everyday loneliness
that filled McTell’s picture of London streets still confuses him. Success has
only added to the confusion, forcing him much like an illness to sit back and
relax. “I’ve enjoyed it all, the
whole trip’s been great. It’s cleared debts to the record company, made them
treat me differently, given me a future, but now more than any other time I must
not be hurried. I need to think, to re-evaluate what has happened.
It’s roughly a decade now since my first professional gig,” McTell
reminisces sombrely, gazing at just another hotel bar, “I’ve got a house and
a car but my artistic development was being stilted in favour of a money making
thing. You go through this
depressing cycle, album / tour / album. “I’ve got to take time out
or I’ll go mad. I’m not going
to tour England for at least a year cause when I do I want to come back with
something new, something different. I’ll
probably go to America for a while and just be a nobody again, with no one that
knows I had a hit,” he says as if it’s a disease. “I’ve never gone onstage and
thought it was just another gig. I’ve
worked hard but I’ve had no fun out of it, no real fun like those university
days. I can’t believe what the media say I am cause I’m not. I suppose in
the early days I went along with that underground image, gave them what they
wanted, but I’m just a working class bloke who writes emotional, caring songs.
The press calls them sentimental but they’re not. All I want to do now
is escape from what I was and try to be who I am.” McTell has come a long way from
the days ex-manager Jo Lustig (everybody’s favourite ex-manager) tried to turn
him into a ‘male Julie Felix’, but his brother Bruce took over helping
regain honesty and integrity. “Bruce and I were talking last
night and we said ‘What are we doing this all for?’ I’m not going to make
another album until I can make one that can be played by anybody without them
going ‘oh fuck, another folkie’. What happens is that you become a machine.
’12 songs a year Ralph’,” he mimics bitterly.
“I could never write a song just because someone needed it, and as the
years go on it becomes harder to write because of the pressure of that album /
tour cycle.” To alleviate the boredom,
pressure and frustration, McTell chose to add a band to his present tour during
the height of his solo popularity. Despite mixed reactions he considers it a
step forward in a career he desperately wants to progress. “About three years ago I
wanted to do a tour with a band but every time the problems seemed
insurmountable. I always wanted to be the band, THE BAND, and now I’ve finally
got the players, these people play. No
demon guitar player, we’ve got a fiddle player, Mike Piggott, a lovely bass
player, Rod Clements who plays bass, not frustrated lead guitar, and an American
drummer, Danny Lane who can capture the feel first time through. Hostile “It’s been a great learning
experience. If I had toured any other country where they didn’t have a
conception of me as a man with a guitar, then the band would have been able to
grow together. We can’t now. I’m sure it’s frustrating for the band only
doing about 7 numbers but I want to please the people that want to hear me on my
own too.” Slightly disillusioned with
success, McTell is retreating to the States, not to avoid tax or save money, but
just to save his sanity, to re-value the past and present in order to decide
about the future. “The job I always enjoyed most
was working on a building site. I was fit, felt great, I had my beer, I was well
adjusted playing guitar for the pleasure
of it. That’s where it all started. I
need that time again. I’ll go to the States and call myself McRalph, knock
about with Danny’s friends. Lots of people talk about it and never do it and
they have nothing to lose. I have a damn well lot to lose but I’ve got to do
it. I’ve got to break the mould.” Right now big, double-decker
buses cruise up and down the streets of London with the face of Ralph McTell
peering out from their backside, clutching his hand rolled cigarette, and
looking towards the future. I don’t know what the future holds for Ralph
McTell but you can bet he’ll still roll his own cigarettes and carry on stage
shirts in crumpled brown paper bags. SOUNDS It’s a brisk wind that blows across the
Thames this crisp autumn evening. The
night air in Putney crackles, sending a pre-winter chill through your body.
Revived by the piercing weather conditions you seek solace in a nearby
pub. Sitting unobtrusively in
a corner with a pint of Special for company, Ralph McTell looks just as ordinary
as the rest of the Duke’s Head clientele. Well-worn denims, tattered old shirt, a
motorcycle jacket with holes sticking through the leather, offset by a rather
large grin. The Duke’s Head is
Ralph’s local and it’s easy to understand why he feels comfortable within
these warm, sturdy walls. There is
nothing very show biz about the pub. Nothing
remotely close to any kind of Top Of The Pops consciousness.
Well, maybe the old geezer propped up against the bar likes to watch
Pan’s People, but that’s it. Ralph McTell doesn’t much like Top Of
The Pops either. His foray into the
top twenty last spring cost him his sanity.
Success has made a curiously adverse mark on McTell.
Rather than embracing all that glitters, he shied away from white
Mercedes limos, post concert champagne celebrations, and adopted a hermit-like
existence. Seven months ago McTell
said goodbye to a career that finally peaked commercially with “Streets of
London”, insisting on keeping a low profile. He has succeeded.
Unlike other contemporaries who yell ‘I quit’ only later to
capitalise on shock, sensationalist press, McTell stuck firmly to his promise to
retire for a year. Riding high on
the crest of a hit single, every performer’s dream, McTell felt the confines
of his folk-image jail imposed by a public that only wanted to know from a guy
that soothes lonely hearts with acoustic accompaniment and a nice smile. “I suppose I write myself off,” Ralph
said of his unusual predicament. “I
was so fucked up at the time I decided no more live work. I’d run out of ideas, and I worried about the band, about
me continually going down better on my own.
That tour was a chance for me to expand and nobody wanted me to.
Everybody wanted to keep me taped in that folkie
bag,” he made an ugly face to illustrate his distaste for the category.
“Everything I tried to do, especially having a hit from an old song,
worked against me. “When I said I was retiring from live
gigs I meant it,” he bangs the table making his tobacco bounce.
“I felt like a great weight had been taken off me.
I immediately went to Cornwall and moved about 20 tons of earth with a
shovel and a wheelbarrow.” By the end of his last tour, McTell
painted a portrait of frustrated agony. Friends
who had known him for years hardly recognised pent-up aggressions that began to
flow as smoothly as the beer on tap. “I’ll tell you how bad it got before
I went to the States, how strung out I was.
One night on tour I was very irritable, we’d had sound problems, I was
tired, so I went back to the hotel and smashed the whole bar up because they
wouldn’t serve me drink. I
could really feel myself wired up, the rush of adrenaline was consuming me. “The barman was up to his knees in
broken glass. Someone at the other
end mumbled something and I offered to have him out. It was the chief of Police!
I got away with it in the end and just paid for the damages,” he
flashes an innocent grin. “But it
was a great relief. It brought the
guys in the band around if they had any doubts about how I felt about the
tour.” Suddenly peaceful attitudes of acceptance
towards whatever came his way disappeared. McTell became easily enraged.
He’d pass a guy in a pub who would mumble something off-hand about
‘Streets of London’, something negative about ‘bloody Ralph McTell’.
Tendencies to ignore similar situations faded away. “For too long I sat back and was a nice
guy,” Ralph says passionately. “I’m
not saying I’m gonna start breaking guitars on stage but I know who I am and I
will not take direct insults anymore. I
used to excuse everybody. Someone
would say ‘Oh your music is a load of shit’ and I’d say ‘OK lovely’.
Once at the Paradiso in Amsterdam someone stopped me after a set and
said, ‘Hey man that’s fucking terrible, really awful’ and I said Thanks a
lot,” McTell relates the incident in disbelief,
“I always thought I shouldn’t say anything, just be cool and never
react.” Artistic frustrations and aggressive
inhibitions began to explode at alarming rates, reaching a boil with the top ten
success. Feeling claustrophobic in
his folky closet, McTell was determined to get out. “The thing about Putney”, he says,
glancing fondly at the people in the Duke’s Head, “is that it’s brought
out who I really am. I never knew
before, which caused a certain amount of confusion.
There I was sitting in my council flat writing all those early songs that
I travelled round the country with for years, but coming here I’ve seen the
other side of me and my music. “I’ve neglected this side for so
long”, he sighs. “I didn’t
have anything as violent as a drummer on my first four records, just plenty of
cymbals, and if we had a drummer they’d mix him down.
Singing soft with meaning is
just as heavy as shouting. Look at
people like J.J. Cale and Dr. John, they don’t shout, they just growl away.
There’s violence and intensity there. “I was making music without a certain
amount of violence, aggression, without BALLS!
Right? I was trying to make
it all so smooth and easy, so lacking in intensity”, he says it like a
terminal disease. “I got muted in the fucking studio half the time because there’s an
audience of two and the engineer yawns and pushes the phasers up.
You see it in a live situation but you need to capture that on record.
That last album was a gigantic step for me.” While the album was a step forward just
like taking a band on the road, the single success was ironically a step
backwards, forcing McTell into a corner that’s virtually impossible to escape
from. The challenge that makes
music filled with genuine urgency began to crumble. “If I hadn’t gone to the States when
I did, I don’t know what would have happened to me”, he says with conviction
and desperation. “It brought me
down to have a hit with an old song because I think I’ve written better songs.
After a while I began to think, what should I do now, maybe there’s a
hit on other albums, and then I just stopped,”
he clenches his fist into a ball. “I
was afraid. I’d try working on songs but nothing seemed good.
I didn’t write to have hit
singles.” Unlike other artists who flock to all the
most expensive shops when the money finally comes in, McTell felt uncomfortable
with sudden fortunes. Driven by an
old fashioned sense of integrity, he’s desperately afraid of losing touch with
his audience if he moves from a comfortable terraced house to a larger, flashier
place. The last time Ralph McTell
bought a pair of jeans they were four quid, now priced £10 he is amazed. “I’ve only just developed a business
sense. It’s amazing.
I’ve made money but I can’t even be persuaded to buy clothes.
It’s inverted snobbery really,” he reflects.
“I want to stay where I was. I
wrote ‘Streets of London’ living in a council flat.
I should move to a bigger house
now, in a plush area, but I really want to keep things funky because I really
believe that will keep the music with
the people. Luxury to me is a
couple of pints here. “If you live that sheltered existence
you write songs about how hard it is living on the road, why doesn’t anybody
understand how rough it is in this hotel suite with lots of money?
I don’t want that. I can’t feel overburdened by money. If I did it would be the absolute end. When I think about the Rolling Stones’ urban street scene
on stage with their mansions in the south of France and their wives dressed by
the best fashion designers and those poor little rag ass kids that come to their
gigs”, he stops for a quick breath, “well, it’s kinda hard to take.” McTell doesn’t profess to be a
working-class hero, nor does he consider himself perfect stuff for an Earls
Court bed-sit. He idealistically
longs for the day when he can transcend categorisation. “People have never thought of me as a
working-class kid that’s made good. Most
of my audience is probably more middle class.
Roy Harper is a better working-class hero of the acoustic world than me.
See I think I cut across. You
never examine why you’re successful because if you know why, you begin to
exploit it. The essential thing is
to keep doing what you believe. I
couldn’t do anything that I wasn’t proud of.” Cruising along at a nice, comfortable but
strictly safe pace, McTell began to lose pride in work that the audience
demanded methodically. ‘Streets
of London’ hit big and wiped away any chance of breaking out of preconceived
moulds with Top Of The Pops energy. “It was too easy.
Eight years easy. I was just rolling along, each record I made sold a little
more than the last, the concert scene grew steadily till I began to sell-out,
but the last couple of years I started to get disillusioned, doing the same
songs over and over again. I knew I
should do new songs but they didn’t want
to hear any new songs. “I just want people to listen to the
music not the image I represent, and with me it’s a safe image.
I’m stuck with that folky image,” he spits the word out like a bad taste in his mouth.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be known for anything else in Britain.
The easiest thing to do would be getting up on stage and doing a really
perverse, uncommunicative act – but all you’d do is lose friends.
I’ll just have to continue to grow but I’m setting my sights on
America.” Tired of seeing his own face on bus backs
and nationwide TV, McTell fled to America, wallowing in anonymous glory,
grateful for a chance to be accepted or rejected for what he did rather than who
he was. He says he would have gone
crazy if he didn’t make the American sojourn although the first few weeks were
equally depressing. “At first I raised my spirits by the
glassful,” he laughs, remembering the pint at his side.
“I used to literally sit there like these guys are now.
You know the scene in those singles bars.
Give us a beer and a shot of old gold.
Disco music pounding out of the jukebox, Barry White stuff. Real drunk couples slurching round the dance floor.
The only way you meet people is talking to them otherwise you just sit
there and get drunk. So I sat there,” he grins sheepishly, “and got drunker
and drunker. Suddenly I thought
what the fuck am I doing?” He was, of course, falling deeper into
another depressed state. Finally he began to play with drummer Danny Lane who
had toured here with Ralph. Danny
introduced him to a bunch of LA pickers called Trashy Kenny and the Dogshit
All-Stars. There were some sessions
with country and western man Red Rhodes. Musical
rejuvenation began to consume him in positive proportions. “I started going to the clubs nightly
seeing bands. Those rhythm sections
are so tight! And the lack of star
consciousness is beautiful. It’s not like ‘listen man, I’m too wasted.’
It’s more like ‘fuck you if you don’t want to play, we’ll get
someone else’. That attitude is
great. I came out of those clubs
with a grin on my face that I usually kept locked up till I got to the pub on
Sunday lunchtime to see the Trad band playing. Nobody worries about who’s in the audience.
They just play. “Sure people said, ‘C’mon Ralph
what’s with the forced modesty?’ But it was like sitting in because they
liked the way you played, not who you were.
A lot of those American musicians have so much soul.
It’s hard to explain to an English musician.
We’re all so fucking intense
and precious about it,” he was getting passionate now, “it’s not precious,
share it as long as the song lasts.” The American jaunt was the necessary
stimulus that prodded Ralph into a productive period again.
No sooner had he arrived in Britain again, his record company began
talking about releasing a newly recorded version of an old song, ‘Let Me Down
Easy’. It was that ‘Streets of
London’ syndrome all over again. McTell quickly snapped back into reality.
Realising the obvious advantage mentally and artistically of releasing
something representative of his work now,
he quickly and easily wrote and recorded ‘Dreams Of You’ which has excited
the people at Warner Brothers with the same enthusiasm that surrounded
‘Streets’. “This new song, I’m proud of,” he
says with genuine bravado. “At least if it’s not a hit the blame is only 50%
mine, cause I nicked the tune. It’s
one of those tunes you find yourself singing.
They used to play it at school assemblies, ‘Jesu Joy Of Man’s
Desiring’. It’s a love song
that brings back memories of someone far away.” The song, like several others, was
written and recorded within a brief two-week span, a new McTell achievement in
lieu of lengthier writing and recording sessions. Again he attributes the situation to recent American
influences with the emphasis on spontaneity.
Next month McTell goes back to the States to begin working on an album,
taking advantages of friends like Trashy Kenny. “I want to put an album together
that’s better than anything I’ve ever done.
I still find the hardest thing writing words.
I could play guitar all day but if the lyrics get too complicated you
begin to wonder is it poetic enough?” he laughs cynically.
“Who listens anyway except for a singles audience?
An album should just be music. “It does worry me, doing the album.
I WANT to record, I’M READY,” he was surging with excitement now.
If only the Duke’s Head had a studio out back.
“I’d love to just go in and play.
Half these guys write songs in the studio and here’s me polishing off
the edges. You can castrate a song
that way. ‘Dreams Of You’ is
one of the quickest songs I’ve ever written. “I want to get it down where I can
write the song in two sittings and if it doesn’t come out then it’s not
ready. From now on I want a simple
direct approach. No songs over 3½
minutes. Take a leaf out of Randy
Newman’s songbook. Two minutes
and it’s all there. That’s
where the craft comes in, getting it down to the fine point where it just flows.
I want that American rhythmic sound so I’m setting my sights on fresh
ground.” Before he ventures back into the
recording studio, McTell will temporarily break his onstage silence with one
singular appearance. His choice of
venue is about as unorthodox as his attitudes to the music business.
Certainly one major London concert would stimulate excitement and
interest but McTell wants to play in Belfast at Queen’s College, and these
days Ralph McTell does things the way he
wants to. “I’d
like to tour Britain but I’ll see how I feel after the Belfast gig on November
9. I’ll just have to work
consciously against the pressure. There
won’t be any of that ‘Oh Ralph we’ve got to promote you, hit the radio
stations, hit the media’. No, not
for me this time,” McTell grins. “I’m
gonna take a little bit of a star privilege and say no.
I’m relaxing now.” But what happens if the single hits big?
No doubt demand from the record company and the public would be strong
for an album and a tour. “Well,” Ralph announces simply,
“they won’t get one.” Outside the Duke’s Head the wind
began to howl. The river looked
dark and uninviting. The autumn
chill cut sharply through your jacket. Putney
pubs were doing good business. Down
the road, good-natured jigs blasted out of the Half Moon. McTell wandered in and quickly ordered a pint of Special
bitter. He sat and began tapping
his foot, looking just as ordinary as the rest of the Half Moon clientele. “How long can I go on, if the
‘rebelling’ university audience I play to grew up learning my songs in
secondary school? I’m up against
myself as part of the establishment!” Hot on
the heels of the belated success of ‘Streets of London’, Ralph McTell packed
his bags and band and headed for the streets of Los Angeles.
He suffered a bad depression, drank too much, wrote too little and
wondered how long he could pretend he didn’t have any money. Then,
like the fog which rolls onto the Thames and eventually retreats, McTell came to
see the light again. ‘Dreams of
You’, half McTell, half Bach was a minor hit during a dry writing period.
In January McTell went to the States to start an album with Shel Talmy.
Recorded and mixed twice, the album included tracks by Tim Hardin and
Randy Newman. McTell didn’t like
the end result, and canned the expensive lot.
He started all over again, looking for something less slick. Now
with nine new songs, plus a version of Tom Waits’ ‘San Diego Serenade’ and
John Martyn’s ‘May You Never’, Ralph McTell has returned. The new album, for all you clown faces is called ‘Right
Side Up’. The title also capsules
the current mood of its sensitive creator. “I’ve
realised that I’ve been persecuting myself unnecessarily for years now” said
an almost astonished McTell. “All
my life I’ve been paranoid about every song I’ve ever recorded.
What if I made a mistake? Did
people understand what I was trying to say?
For years I lived out in a council estate in the middle of nowhere.
I did five albums there and was only half aware that I had a family life.
Some people believe I did my best work there.
But staying there wouldn’t have I’d continue to. “We
now have a great big empty house in Putney and three kids.
I’ve come to realise how important and precious my family are to me.
But I’m not worried about losing anything.
An artist essentially needs to have an antennae stuck out to find what
people are into. By being closer to
London I’ve found a lot more stimulus. My
friends are still the people they’ve always been, used car dealers, buskers
and people I meet in pubs. I still
get off on just people.” One of
the things that McTell has always “gotten off” on, which has worked in a
mutual circumstance, has been university gigs. “I
love ‘em” says McTell without a breath’s hesitation. “I’m a scruffy performer.
I don’t have anything about me that could be loosely termed as an
‘act’. I sit down and rap with
my audiences and play songs. When I
first started, I felt very self conscious.
I didn’t even have A levels. I
wondered what the hell I was doing up there talking.
But it seemed to work and now I look forward to it because it’s so
refreshing. “But
if you think about it, ‘Streets of London’ is ten years old.
It’s being taught in primary and secondary schools.
Now when you get out of secondary school, you want to kick against
everything you grew up with. How
long can I continue to go on, if the ‘rebelling’ university I play to grew
up learning my songs in secondary school? I’m
up against myself as part of the establishment!” Ageing
is an inevitable part of the human process, but as Sly Stone once sang it,
‘Dying young is hard to take, selling out is worse’. In the eyes of those who equate folk singers with troubadours
who play acoustic guitars and starve, McTell has not only committed the
gossiping sin of denying his calling as a folkie, but has achieved commercial
success. (His views on 101 ways not
to be a folkie were chronicled on these pages on Nov. 1 1975.)
The ideal of selling out has made the now stable McTell’s good nature
go sour. “As
soon as ‘Streets’ became a hit the word went out, ‘Oh, now that Ralph’s
had a hit he’s going to start putting out singles’.
I didn’t do that. I went
to thinking of my old fans, my old loyal
fans. I know how fickle the singles
business is and I couldn’t see, then or now, which way I could possibly go
because I write songs that aren’t supposed to be commercial. “The
follow up to ‘Streets’ was a flop, which I told the record company when they
insisted on releasing it. ‘Dreams
of You’ was a small hit but I can’t follow it up in the approved manner,
that is, I can’t sing it live. I’ve
never done it on stage because there’s no room to breathe. When we recorded it, I stopped and restarted the tape between
verses. When people ask for it on
stage, I just have to say ‘sorry’. On the
other hand, there’s a single coming off the new album called ‘Weather The
Storm’. I’m proud of the album
and I want people to know it’s out. I’m
talking to you because I want to fill in the gap. I didn’t have a nervous breakdown, though times were rough.
But when you come close to slipping, you learn to recognise the symptoms
and if things get too pressured you know how to deal with them. “If
‘Weather The Storm’ becomes a hit it won’t worry me. I’ll know how to handle it.
But if it becomes a hit I’ll be accused of selling out again.
I’ve come to realise that there will always be people who see me as
selling out. Tough!
They can find themselves another hero.
For eight years I was a bunch of people’s private property.
No one else knew about me. They
played the albums to the exclusivity of most people.
Now that lots of people know about me, it’s no longer exclusive.
Therefore I’ve had to have sold out.
It makes me angry.” ‘Right
Side Up’ is the first album which McTell finds is “more subjective than
objective. But that’s all
right” he notes peacefully. “Most
people start off writing that way and several of the songs on the album serve to
narrate what I’ve been up to. ‘Weather
The Storm’, even without its new single status stands out as the
collection’s most infectious and compelling saga.
McTell sceptics will be impressed by the optimistic message curled
throughout the verses. The song
relates not only to McTell, but to several of his mates whose raw deals have
battered their hopes, as Streets’ success almost battered Ralph’s.
“It’s the first manufactured song I’ve ever written.
The phrase ‘weather the storm’ came up, so I just tacked it onto the
tune I’d already written and that was it.”
SOUNDS Which would be a pity since, once you get past the fact that 'Streets Of London' (one of his least distinguished songs) gets the biggest applause, this album is an excellent introduction to the range of McTell's work over more than a decade. The lilting, nostalgic love songs are here: 'First Song', 'Let Me Down Easy' and 'Grande Affaire'. They are counterbalanced by three from the 'Not Till Tomorrow' album which showed a new depth and insight in his writing: the elegiac 'Sylvia' (for the poet Sylvia Plath), the deceptively jaunty 'When I Was A Cowboy' and 'Zimmerman Blues', delivered with a passion which sums up McTell's decidedly healthy attitude towards the star system. Live albums have always been a rather dubious concept, but this works as well
as any. The sound is immaculate, and the necessary applause is compensated for
by Ralph's elegant introductory chats. A must for the fans.
SOUNDS When success suddenly demanded
that Ralph McTell act like a star, talk like a star and dress like a star, he
decided to do something about it. He went to America, booked into
a motel and didn’t speak to anyone for three weeks. Then he took nine months off.
No follow up records. No big
tour. Silence. Yet Streets of London was the most popular Number One of the year, his
record company was forecasting a rich future and television had turned him into
a national personality. That was three years ago.
Today, McTell, who’s about as level-headed a singer that you could meet
in the neurotic music business, sips pints of bitter over a solid lunch of roast
beef and explains “I felt that my audience believed that I’d sold out. “After years of building up a
following and loyalty from clubs all over the country, I could feel them
thinking that I’d turned into a rock ‘n’ roll star. Confused “After spending so many years
on the road and never selling out as regards my image or integrity I became
confused with the whole business. My
morale dropped to its lowest point at the time, I nearly quit altogether. “I was so screwed up when I
booked in to that motel – and I decided the best thing was to spend time by
myself, thinking of where I should be heading.
It was not, definitely not, a good time for me.” Ironically, McTell is not the
sort of man to give in to artistic whims. He
admits today that the reason for his behaviour seems rather fragile, but then
it’s that special relationship which he has developed with audiences that
makes McTell so distinctive. He started out busking cinema
queues in Paris, developed with a club residency in Cornwall, then trod water
during five years living in a council flat from where he toured Britain in an
ex-Post Office van which he bought for £45. In 1970, he filled the Royal
Festival Hall on reputation alone and throughout the decade has produced ten
albums and successfully toured America, Australia and Europe. Now he’s 34 and has just
started what he calls a ‘get back to the people tour’ which runs until the
end of May. A new album called ‘Slide
Away The Screen’ does just that. It
reveals a fresh and recommendable collection of McTell material. “I must have done more than
2,000 concerts now, all over the world,” he says, “but each time I go out I
fear that this might be the night they stop liking me.” McTell has a Norwegian born
wife, Nanna, whom he met in Paris when he could barely afford the price of a
meal. They have four children, aged
12 years to 11 months. McTell now has the luxury
trappings which go with top-selling records and sell-out tours.
At one time he lived in a £50 caravan in Cornwall, now he owns a house
with another in London. Award “But we spent five of the most
miserable years of our lives in a council flat, because we were saving so hard
to get a place of our own.” he says, “And I spent a year at a
teacher-training college to get an alternative profession, in case my singing
did not come to anything.” We return to Streets
of London which among other things won an Ivor Novello Award and is now
being used as a set piece for guitar tuition in many schools. “In retrospect, I was wrong to
act the way I did after that success,” he says, “what ever I do in the
future – or whatever I don’t do – I will always be the man who wrote Streets
of London, and that is like a heaven-sent gift.”
|
